Slashdot Mirror
Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years. Most ambulance services use an international computerized system designed in America and in the US version, a fall of more than 6 feet receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in Great Britain decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. If a call involved a fall of more than 6 feet it was designated a lower priority 'category B response' despite the presence of life-threatening conditions which were supposed to receive the most urgent category A response. The flaw came to light after Bonnie Mason, 58, fell 12 feet down the stairs and died from a head injury after emergency controllers in Suffolk failed to identify her situation as 'life-threatening.'"
Caller: Please hurry!! He's fallen down a 30ft well! Can't you get here any faster!?
A&E Drone: *clackety clackety* ...... Computer say Nooooo....
May the Maths Be with you!
Mod parent up. What we should be reading is a headline that says Great Britain Death Panel Doing Bang Up Job.
Is anyone else reminded of Star Control 2? The "peaceful" Slylandro probe... which was misconfigured with bad priorities.
Captain: Your probe DOES destroy ships and I can prove it!
Slylandro: No! It cannot! It is not programmed for hostile behavior! What is your reasoning?!
Captain: Think about what a probe does when it meets a ship.
Slylandro: Space ships are the probe's highest priority because we want more than anything to make friendly contact with alien races.
Captain: Think about a probe's Replication behavior.
Slylandro: The probe seeks raw materials, and processes them in preparation for Replication.
Captain: Think about the effect of changing the replication behavior's priority.
Slylandro: The answer is simple... it would spend more of its time seeking raw materials for its replication process. So what?
Captain: Now, what will it do to a ship, given that its Replication priority is set to maximum?
Slylandro: I don't see what you are getting at, but I'll play along with you.
Slylandro: Like I said, alien ships are THE top priority target. Once a probe scanned a ship, it would instantly move toward it. Then, when it got to the ship, it would initiate communication automatically. When communications were terminated, a new behavior would be selected, and...
Slylandro: Uh-oh.
Slylandro: A new behavior would be selected, and since the Replication setting was set to maximum the probe wouldn't get time to pick a new target... it would use the current target--the ship--for raw Replication materials. It would process the ship, break it into component compounds with electrical discharges.
Slylandro: Oh no! what have we done? Traveller! You must tell us what we can do! How can we stop the probes from destroying all life in the galaxy?!
F0 07 C7 C8
At least the Brits can be credited for the genius of their new number and catchy jingle. Oh one one eight, nine nine nine--eight eight one nine nine, nine one one nine seven two five! .... three.
Either that or they put a bunch of bureaucrats and accountants in control of the money and they needed a measure to determine how to spend said money... you know, the stuff they keep telling us won't happen.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
How could such an audience miss this opportunity to quote Python (Monty)!
What's that in meters?
Have gnu, will travel.
...and we have a Queen you may have heard of.
Please be Elton John...
Please be Elton John...
Please be Elton John...
AWESOME!
ambulances don't run on good deeds and angels wings.
They would if those gosh darn republicans would just get out of the Obamassiah's way!
In other news:
"A flaw in Slashdot's sensationalistic story submission system may have caused hundreds to accidentally RTFA.."
The British aren't really Europeans. Socially, they're much more like Americans than they are like those from the Continent.
It's the other way round actually. Americans (or the subset in the US, and a bit in Canada, rather) are much like the British and therefore aren't very European because the British refuse to be since they are after all 20km away from the continent. :)
The same continent they kept trying, sometimes successfully, to invade, during the last thousand years. Now they just send us their pop singers while acting rude in their trash newspapers.
We still enjoy going for a visit though because they have fine beers
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Please be Elton John...
Please be Elton John...
Please be Elton John...
FABULOUS!
FTFY.